We’ve all experienced it at one time or another: The Mommy Drive-By. When a someone — a relative, another mom, a total stranger — takes it upon herself to question your judgment or criticize your parenting.

Single moms get flak about their social lives. Step moms are looked down upon for not being “a real parent.” Breast-feeding mamas get hit when they nurse their child in public; formula-feeding mothers get the evil eye when they whip out a bottle instead of a breast. Mothers from all walks of life are questioned for decisions large and small. And working mothers, well, they get a little bit of “all of the above.” Read the rest of this entry »

With five kids, two parents who work full-time, a 75-pound black lab who sheds hair like he’s desperately trying to clone himself, no housekeeper, and my tendency to clutter, I don’t need to tell you that my house isn’t pristine. It’s not filthy — in terms of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization’s Clutter Hoarding Scale, we’re not more than a 1, the lowest score. But still, I wouldn’t happily eat off of the floor or anything. (My toddler is far less discriminating.)

The other day, my husband went on a cleaning tantrum. He started with the kitchen, moving things off the counter tops and scrubbing the stove and swabbing the backsplash with powerful detergents. He tossed the newspapers I’d left languishing in a pile on a chair and wiped down every surface he could find while I worked in the next room.

I was grateful. I was also mortified. I appreciated the fact that he recognized I was overloaded and couldn’t get to the cleaning myself, but still… it made me feel like I’d failed, somehow. Read the rest of this entry »

Your site doesn’t show that you have a good sense of what women want — where is all the celebrity content and diet tips?

When I read that on Nataly’s great post about the upside of being a working mom, I cringed. Sure, some women want celebrity content and diet tips, but that doesn’t mean that every woman does. And how could anyone say that a woman entrepreneur crafting a site for working women doesn’t have a good sense of what working women want? Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve just finished twisting our 12-year-old’s curls into about eleventy-billion tiny, two-strand twists, and my hands are still slick with conditioner. The little two are tucked in bed, stuffed animals clutched in their sweaty little hands. The other big kids are playing “Rock Band” with my husband, just a couple of feet away from me in the family room. It’s past bedtime, and bits of conversation (like “We should be concentrating our efforts on Killasaurus,” and “Daddy! We should play San Francisco now!” and “That’s such a sweet song and then they hit you with the ‘f’ word…”) grasp the edges of my concentration as I try to write.

I could — should, really — go to another room so I can get my work done. I mean, the work has to get done. But I’m loathe to leave. Even when my husband hands me the mic and asks me to sing “Maps” — an obvious sign that I’m not going to get much done if I’m also expected to sing lead — I don’t go.

Sometimes, the thing that really gets in the way when I’m trying to juggle work and family is myself. Read the rest of this entry »

When I went back to work after having my first baby, I was working days while my husband worked nights. He’d hang out with our baby during the day, then take her in to the office at the start of his shift. My shift ended when his started, and he’d hand her off to me and I’d take her back home for what I called my Second Shift with the kids (my first baby was also our fourth child).

I often said that the thing that made returning to work after my first maternity leave most manageable, for me, was the knowledge that my baby was spending the day with her dad instead of with someone I didn’t already know and trust. So Carolyn Hax’s piece over at The Washington Post today really struck a chord with me. Read the rest of this entry »

I keep running lists of things I never thought I’d say as a parent. You know, things like “Don’t lick the microwave” and “Pennies are not for eating” and “No, you can’t ride the dog.” The other day, as I flaked dried applesauce off of the sleeve of my favorite black blazer, I looked at the “Dora the Explorer” bandage on my cut finger and decided to start another list: My top 10 signs you’re a working Mom.

So, with apologies to David Letterman (and possibly Jeff Foxworthy), you know you’re a working mom if…

1.) You put things you’ve already done on your to-do list, just so you have something to cross off immediately.

2.) You’ve lost weight, and you realize that it’s probably because all you’re eating is whatever is left on your toddler’s plate after dinner.

3.) You’ve gained weight, and you realize that it’s probably because you’re eating whatever is left on your toddler’s plate after dinner in addition to your own meal. Read the rest of this entry »

In the past week, I’ve had three people ask me, “How do you do it all?” And each person got a different answer

The first answer: It’s amazing what you can do if you don’t know you can’t do it. That’s pretty much my mantra. It got me through college, when I worked two jobs while carrying a larger-than-full-time course load, and it gets me through life as a working mom with a larger-than-full-time life load.

The person who got this answer — a colleague with two young kids — was surprised by the number of hours I work each week (about 60) when coupled with the number of kids we currently have at home (five). So the other part of this answer is this: It’s also amazing what you can do if you feel you have to, whether it’s working two jobs to support your family or carting four kids to karate class because you don’t have a sitter and it doesn’t seem right to inflict your squawking bundle of 20-month-old joy upon anyone else, including his 14-year-old sister.  You just get it done. Read the rest of this entry »

I had a birthday recently. And I don’t feel a day over 40! Which is great, except for the fact that I turned 36.

A few years ago, I gave up writing my New Year’s Resolutions on New Year’s Eve and began writing them on my birthday instead. (Sound familiar? Nataly does something similar on her birthday. Could this introspection be a key to success as a working mother? I’d like to think so.)

When I was a kid, my New Year’s Resolutions were all about the things I thought I was supposed to be doing — practicing my violin every day, getting As in school, being nice to my brothers, etc. As I grew older, the resolutions changed, but the idea behind them didn’t; they were still about the things I thought I was supposed to be doing. Each year, I’d vow to lose weight (why did I want to do this? I had a killer body back then, and no idea what to do with it), ace my performance reviews at work (the same as getting As at school, really), learn how to be less of a control freak (about 10 years ago I decided that you can’t be a control freak if you can’t control yourself, and I set to work on that instead).

New Year’s Resolutions are supposed to be about bettering yourself, yes? Well now, firmly in my mid-30s, I’ve decided to make mine about bettering my life. So, here’s what I’m going to do, I hope, in the next 12 months: Read the rest of this entry »

I love being up early, but I’ve never been good at getting up early. I’m grouchy and groggy in the morning, even though I’m instantly awake multiple times in the middle of the night if any of the children so much as wimper. (Hmmm… connection, maybe? Nah.)

Right now, in order to get everyone and everything ready for 8 a.m. camp and school, I need to be up by 6. No matter how much I get done the night before, it seems that I still need that much time to get the ball rolling (or juggling, as the case may be) in the morning. This morning was so hectic, in fact, that I’m considering getting up even earlier, even though the idea of the alarm going off at 5:30 makes me cringe.

Once 9 a.m. rolls around, though, I’m raring to go. The problem is that by then I’m usually stuck in traffic on the way to work, crawling along the highway or hugging the speed limit on a winding back road. Read the rest of this entry »